The provincial government of a central Indian state has announced plans to add more teeth to its sweeping anti-conversion law, which is often used to target Christians in the country.
The proposed bill by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Chhattisgarh requires individuals seeking to convert to another religion to apply at least 60 days in advance to the district magistrate.
The Chhattisgarh Religion Freedom (Amendment) Act, 2006, requires the application to be submitted 30 days in advance.
The proposed law will also have more punitive measures to stop fraudulent religious conversions in the state, known for its large tribal population.
It proposes a punishment of a minimum of two years and a maximum of 10 years in prison, along with a fine of Rs 25,000 (US$301) for illegally converting minors, women, or persons belonging to the tribal community.
Brijmohan Agarwal, minister for religious trusts and endowments, speaking in the state assembly on Feb. 13, warned that many forces were “at work to alter the demography of Chhattisgarh.”
A.C. Michael, president of the Federation of Catholic Associations of Archdiocese of Delhi said that “Agarwal is liable to be questioned for making a false statement in the assembly as there are no illegal conversions taking place in the state.”
Michael asked the minister to “come up with evidence to prove his claims.”

A convent school in Mangaluru, southern India, on February 15 denied the allegations from some Hindu nationalist groups that a nun teacher had made derogatory remarks against Hindu deities.
St. Gerosa High School’s denial came three days after it suspended the nun, yielding to the pressure from the Hindu groups.
A press statement from Sister Anitha, the school headmistress, clarified that Sister Mary Prabha Selvaraj had not insulted Hindu gods but only taught Nobel Laureate poet Ravindranath Tagore’s poem on “Work is Worship” in a moral science class.
The headmistress said the nun had denied belittling Hindu deities. What she did was to explain to the students the meaning of the poem. The teacher had clarified that she had not hurt Hindu religious sentiments.
The trouble started after an audio clip from the mother of an unnamed student went viral. It alleged that the nun had made derogatory remarks about Hindu gods during class in early February.
On February 12, Hindu groups led by local legislator Vedavyas Kamath barged into the school and demanded immediate suspension of the teacher.
“As alleged by the anonymous woman in the voice message and the BJP leaders, Sr Prabha did not make any derogatory remarks against Hindu or any other religion or on the prime minister while explaining the poem.”
The headmistress also clarified that the school management had urged the district administration to conduct an enquiry into the matter, stating that the audio message was far from the truth. The school also sought protection from any untoward incident.
“A complaint was also lodged with the police to take action against the woman’s audio that had gone viral,” Sister Anitha said.

Hundreds of thousands of Indian Catholics are petitioning the government to improve living conditions there.
The Syro-Malabar Catholic Congress presented Kerala state Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan with the petition late last month after a major signature campaign, one meant to address what the congress described as “unprecedented crises” facing the Christian community there.
Vijayan “was very concerned and assured to consider our demands,” Catholic Congress President Biju Parayannilam told this month.
“Around half a million Catholics” in Kerala signed the petition, UCA News said.
“Ordinary people are struggling to eke out a living and we want the government to focus its attention on their problems,” Father Philip Kaviyil, director of the Catholic Congress’ global committee, told the news outlet.
Among the demands presented to the government was the timely delivery of social security payments. Elderly citizens in the state are given the equivalent of about $20 per month from the government, but they “are not getting it on time, making their life miserable,” the priest said.
Farmers are also reportedly struggling to make ends meet while also dealing with wild animal attacks.
Parayannilam said the activists were “hopeful that the government will make some positive announcement regarding our demands in the current budget session of the state assembly.”

A Hindu group has given an ultimatum to Christian schools in India’s north-eastern Assam state to rid themselves of all Christian symbols including religious habits and cassocks.
Satya Ranjan Borah, president of the Hindu outfit Kutumba Surakshya Parishad (family safety council) said the move aims to stop Christian missionaries from using schools for conversion activities.
“Christian Missionaries are converting schools and educational institutes into religious institutes. We will not allow it,” he said at a press conference in Guwahati on Feb. 7
Assam is ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The group wants the idols or photographs of Jesus and Mary removed and has set a 15-day deadline for Christian schools to comply, failing which they warned of dire consequences.
Borah said they also want priests, nuns and brothers serving in Christian schools to stop wearing cassocks and religious habits on school campuses.
He accused them of promoting Christianity in schools through the display of such Christian symbols.
Archbishop John Moolachi-ra of Guwahati said all the alle-gations “are baseless.”
“We are aware of the threat and I do not understand why is this happening,” he told on February 9.
Christians have been actively involved in imparting education for several decades in Assam’s remote areas where poor tribal people dwell.

A body bringing together India’s Latin Catholic, Syro-Malabar, and Syro-Malankara bishops deplored Wednesday increasing attacks on the country’s Christian minority.
In a six-page statement issued Feb. 7, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) ex-pressed alarm at rising intolerance in Indian society and political life.
It said: “Attacks on Christians continue to increase in different parts of India. Destruction of homes and churches, harassment of personnel serving in orphanages, hostels, educational and healthcare institutions on false allegations of conversion have become common.”
Christians account for around 2.3% of India’s population, forming the country’s third-largest religious group, after Muslims (14.2%), and Hindus (79.8%).
Roughly a third of Indian Christians – more than 20 million people – are Catholic. They belong to three autonomous particular churches: the Latin Church, the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church.
Since 2014, India has been led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a member of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In April and May this year, India is scheduled to hold general elections, in which Modi will seek a third term in power.
In January, the advocacy group Open Doors listed India as the world’s 11th worst country in which to be a Christian.

Christian and Muslim leaders have disapproved of the passing of a polarising and contentious uniform civil code by a pro-Hindu government in a northern Indian state.
The Uniform Civil Code Bill was passed after two days of debate on Feb. 7 by the Uttarakhand state assembly through a voice vote amidst chanting of ‘Jai Sri Ram’ (Hail Lord Ram) and other pro-Hindu slogans.
The Uttarakhand government has fulfilled the demand of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an umbrella organization of Hindu groups, Christian and Muslim leaders said.
The RSS has long espoused a common civil code for the entire nation of 1.4 billion. It has been one of the electoral promises made by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India does not have uniform laws for personal matters such as marriage, divorce, adoption and inheritance. Instead, it has a patchwork of different codes based on the customary traditions of different communities and faiths.
The rights of women, children, and families across India vary considerably depending on which code they fall under.
Goa located on India’s west coast is the only part of India with a common code, introduced when it was a Portuguese colony.
Many hardline Hindu politicians, jurists and reformists have described these custom-based codes as regressive and have lobbied for a code that would apply to all Indians equally.

After the recent arrests of priests and a nun in India on charges that they violated the Hindu-majority country’s “anti-conversion” laws, a Catholic bishop has sent out an appeal “to storm heaven with prayers.”
Bishop Ignatius D’Souza of Bareilly in the Archdiocese of Agra issued a “prayer request” on social media Feb. 7.
“I request you to storm heaven so that all those who are dealing with this sensitive case may get enlightened by the Holy Spirit and our brothers may be released soon,” D’Souza pleaded.
In the post, he said that Father Dominic Pinto and nine Protestant lay organizers have been taken into custody on charges that they violated the anti-conversion act, which, he said, does not allow those arrested to be released on bail.
Eleven out of India’s 28 states have passed laws to criminalize forced conversions but, in practice, they have been used to prevent the practice of the Christian faith.
Pinto, director of the Lucknow Diocese’s pastoral center in northern Uttar Pradesh state, was arrested on Feb. 6 for allowing a gathering of 100 people led by evangelical pastors to take place in the Catholic center. The government of Uttar Pradesh is controlled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India’s population is 79.8% Hindu, 14.2% Muslim, and 2.3% Christian. In Uttar Pradesh state – India’s most populous state with 2.3 million inhabitants – only 18% are Christian.
“Hindu fundamentalists barged into the center and insisted on the arrest of the priest at the police station along with the pastors while other fundamentalists even threatened the nearby convent and nuns nearby,” Father Donald D’Souza, chancellor of the Lucknow Diocese, told.

Suman Pinto, an addiction counsellor with nearly three decades of service, was awarded the “Person of the Year, 2023” by the Link Association.
The association, a pioneering group in addiction recovery services in coastal Karnataka, has instituted the award in collaboration with Ecolink Institute of Well-being, global trainers of addiction professionals.
The award was given at a function on January 13 during the association’s annual assembly.
Suman, who did her Masters in Social Work from Roshni Nilaya in 1995, currently works as the director of the addiction treatment center at Dr. Tunga’s Manaswini Hospital, Arkula on the outskirts of Mangaluru.
She started her career as a counselor in addiction recovery at Link Integrated rehabilitation center, who went on to serve in other prestigious institutions in Mangaluru under renowned psychiatrists in Father Mullers hospital, K S Hegde Medical Academy and Prajna Counselling Centre.
With her nearly three decades of experience in addiction therapy and as a counsellor in K S Hegde Medical Academy, Suman has played significant roles in developing the addiction treatment program at the medical college and served the community-based deaddiction camps by the Dharmasthala for over a decade.

India today saw the consecration of the Ram Mandir, the monumental temple in Ayodhya desired by Hindu nationalists at the site where, according to Hindu tradition, the god Ram was born.
“The consecration and inauguration of Ram Temple in Ayodhya is a matter of joy for millions of Ram bhaktas or devotees of Lord Ram,” said Bishop Gerald Mathias of Lucknow, a large city in Uttar Pradesh, speaking to AsiaNews about the event.
“I wish and pray that this ceremony and inauguration will also inaugurate the Ram Rajya that Mahatma Gandhi dreamt of for our beloved country. Ram Rajya or the Kingdom of God is characterised by the divine and human values of justice, peace, love, brotherhood, tolerance, and religious harmony.
The solemn ceremony, which represents a personal triumph for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, comes at the end of the long controversy with Muslims whose Babri mosque stood at the same site, but was razed to the ground by Hindu fundamentalists in 1992 in an event that triggered a spiral of communal violence that cost thousands of deaths.
It was designed to accommodate up to a million people at any one time, with the ambition of exceeding the number of visitors who travel to the Vatican and Makkah every year.

The Ram temple that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated this week is a mile-stone in assessing how his lea-dership is changing India’s con-cept of secularism and democracy with far-reaching implications for its religious minorities, particu-larly Muslims and Christians.
When Modi became prime minister for the first time, leading his pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a landslide victory in the 2014 parliamentary elect-ions, he was just a chief minister of Gujarat state, one of 28 Indian states.
The victory was powered by the groundwork done for decades by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is an umbrella forum of Hindu organizations that work to make India a nation of Hindu hegemony.
Since 2014, Modi’s BJP and the RSS have been working with-out losing sight of their prime objective – making India a Hindu nation.
Many believed a second term for the BJP in 2019 after winning more seats in parliament would lead to changing certain features of India’s secular constitution in the push for a Hindu nation. But the Modi administration showed no rush to do that.
“As prime minister, he does not need to change the written constitution as his political oppo-nents keep saying. Looking at it carefully, you will realize Modi has effectively reshaped the coun-try with his governance strategies already,” according to Assam-based social scientist Ashutosh Talukdar.